Private-sector unions target BCE ahead of merger

If Bell can afford to buy up media outlet after media outlet, it can well afford to pay its staff

TORONTO — The country’s two biggest private-sector unions, on the verge of a landmark merger, have found their first mutual corporate target: Sprawling media and telecom conglomerate BCE Inc.

With the Canadian Auto Workers union moving closer this week to joining with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers, roughly 1,000 CAW delegates interrupted their national convention here to throw support behind 100 or so CEP television technicians locked out by Bell.

Members of CEP 79M have been shut out by Bell since July 13 after negotiations spanning more than a year between the newly organized branch and the company finally broke down.

Ken Lewenza, head of the CAW, whose members voted Wednesday to join with the CEP, called the lockout a “disgrace,” adding the CAW would “not tolerate a wealthy company like Bell attacking its workforce with the sheer goal of extracting ever more money.”

The union head criticized the Montreal-based giant for not coming to terms with a relatively small group while it has spent or committed to spend, billions of dollars acquiring television and media assets in recent months.

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The country’s largest telecom company is proposing to spend another $3-billion (and assume $380-million in debt) to acquire Astral Media Inc. later this year, assuming it gets regulatory approvals. The bid, made in March, came just eleven months after the company paid $1.3-billion to acquire CTV, the largest broadcaster and specialty channel owner in Canada.

“If Bell can afford to buy up media outlet after media outlet, it can well afford to pay its staff,” Mr. Lewenza said.

A spokesperson for Bell said company negotiators “bargained at length” with the union and “presented a very fair and appropriate proposal.”

A merged CAW-CEP would represent some 300,000 workers across the country, with 195,000 coming from CAW and 105,000 from CEP, which represents workers in the media and resource sectors. The smaller of the two unions will hold its own vote on the merger at its annual convention in Quebec City in October.

The CEP’s ranks have been bolstered in part by an organizing campaign aimed at technicians and other employees of telecom operators like Bell and Rogers Communications Inc., which are some of the most profitable companies in the country and employ tens of thousands of workers each.

CEP 79M was organized in April 2011 — the same month Bell took full ownership of CTV — and had been negotiating its first collective bargaining agreement.

The group of workers are responsible for operating Bell’s satellite distribution service, which beams television into about two million homes across the country. Mike Kachurowski, the union’s lead negotiator, said the average staff salary is in the mid-$40,000 range, below norms across the largely unionized television production industry.

Unionized staff have gone without a wage increase for several years, he and others said, a period in which Bell CEO George Cope has reduced head count and pulled out hundreds of millions in operating costs as part of a strategy to put the giant on a more competitive footing.

The strategy appears to be working. Bell parent BCE saw net earnings climb 31% to $773-million last quarter, or $1 a share, while Bell posted impressive margins, in part because of cost-cutting efforts.

“It’s a message to Bell and the corporate community at large that has taken the attitude that workers in general and communities should not profit from an economic rebound, that it should be divvied among shareholders and CEOs being paid exorbitant salaries while workers are being told to cut, cut, cut, cut,” CAW secretary-treasurer Peter Kennedy said on route to the picket line.

“The fact is, we’re creating more wealth in this economy than at any time in our history and it’s being unevenly spread. For most Canadian families, it’s done nothing.”